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About 2 weeks ago, a 31 years old Shanghainese woman accidently fell from almost 20 meters high into the sea. She was on a cruise boat going from shanghai to Japan and Korea. She tried to scream for help but nobody heard her, then waited for 38hours before a fishing boat rescued her. Many Chinese people on Weibo did not believe her story, some others said the 1.75m woman should have joined the Olympic games.

The 2016 Rio Summer Olympics is China’s worst in 20 years, with “only” 26 gold medals. In 2008, China got 51, and in 2012, 38. Meanwhile for Great Britain, Rio has been their most successful Olympics in 108 years. But beyond the medals count, it is the first time that the world truly discovered Chinese athlete’s personalities. Among the most famous ones are diver Qin Kai and his wedding proposal, swimmer Fu Yuanhui’s and her honesty during interviews, or volleyball team coach Lang Ping’s leadership.

The Philippines was Asia’s fastest growing economy in the second quarter, based on the government’s announcement on Thursday of 7.0% growth in April-June compared to the same period last year. The pace was the country’s quickest in three years, and beat the first quarter’s 6.8%. Meanwhile, China reported second quarter growth of 6.7 percent, and earlier this month data showed that in July China home prices rose at its quickest pace in 2 years, with 7.9%. However, experts do not expect the rise to keep going on for long.

In a short period of time, Asian multinationals became part of the world’s elite. But despite this rapid success, they still often lack of corporate culture and strong brand images. One reason may be that many are family or state-owned. They operate in a top-down system with one single person making most of the decisions, which does not help attracting or preserving the best talents. Brand image building issues are also quite common, with examples like Baidu who failed to sincerely communicate about how it would solve its search engine issues. Or Alibaba’s boss Jack Ma who claimed that many fake products are now of better quality than genuine articles while trying to respond to critics over the availability of counterfeit products on Taobao. But despite obstacles, experts say Asian multinationals are young and learning fast, citing Samsung as the best example.

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